Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of traffic to a website through organic search engine results. It involves optimising your website’s content, structure, and other elements to make it more attractive to search engines and improve its visibility in search results pages. Writing a web article is one of the best ways to improve your SEO ranking.
The ultimate goal of SEO is to rank a website as high as possible in search engine results pages (SERP) for relevant keywords or phrases. This helps increase the visibility of the website, drives more traffic to it, and potentially leads to more business opportunities.
SEO involves a range of techniques, including keyword research and optimisation, content creation and optimisation, website structure and navigation optimisation, link-building, and technical optimisation. SEO is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring, testing, and adjustment to achieve the best possible results.
Focus keyword
Each article must contain a unique (never been used before) long-tail keyword. The focus keyword should appear:
- naturally in the article URL and title;
- in the meta description;
- in the first paragraph;
- in at least one heading and/or two subheadings; and
- in the body text about 0,5% times; and
The focus keyword – or keyphrase – is the search term that you want your page to rank for most. So, when people search for that word or phrase, they should find you.
Title
All titles should include the focus keyword of the article, preferably at the beginning of the title, and should not be cut off in the Google snippet search results (usually no longer than 70 characters, or approximately 10 words).
- Suggested reading on SEO titles: How to craft great page titles for SEO.
Meta description
Each article must include a meta description of about 155 characters (approximately 30 words) that includes the article focus keyword and briefly summarises the article’s content.
- Suggested reading on meta descriptions: How to create the right meta description.
Inbound links
Try to include at least one inbound link (a link to another page or article on your website) in each article.
External links
Try to include at least one external link to a respectable page with information that relates to your article, and which is not a competitor or is competing for the same focus keyword.
Featured image
Each article must have a header image that adequately complements the article content and visually represents the article focus keyword.
Article text
Articles should be a minimum of 300 words, although the preferable length is 500 words. Longer articles (1 000 words or more) can potentially be split and turned into a series (this could also assist you with internal links).
- Suggested reading on article length: How long should a blog post be?
For further tips on writing content for the web, please read “The power of content: Why writing articles for your website matters” by Ryan Wiggill.
